The individual section or IS glassware forming machine is well known and has a plurality of individual glassware forming sections, each of which has a plurality of glassware forming mechanisms. Typically, the individual sections are fed from a single source of molten glass which feeds and sequentially distributes gobs of molten glass to the individual sections in an ordered sequence over one machine cycle consisting of a fixed member of clock pulses to form the gobs into glassware articles by cycling the forming mechanisms in a predetermined sequence of forming steps. An electronic control system is associated with each individual section and responsive to each clock pulse for providing a load signal and a plurality of forming signals to actuate the forming mechanisms during the machine cycle. A gob load circuit provides a gob load signal in response to a load signal from any one of the control systems and means responsive to the absence of the gob load signal for deflecting a gob to prevent it from being distributed to an individual section. The sections are operated in synchronism at a relative phase difference such that one section is receiving a gob while other sections are performing various ones of the intermediate forming steps.
Modern electronic control systems utilize a digital computer such as, for example, those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,905,793 and 4,152,134, as opposed to discrete components such as, for example, that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,762,907. A section operator consol or SOC is provided at each individual section to enable a machine operator to change the timing data for any of the forming steps. The SOC is connected to the individual section computer, reads the timing change and replaces the corresponding previous timing data. Not only does the utilization of the computer provide a means for automatically changing the sequence of the forming steps and controlling whether or not an individual section is to receive gobs, but also provides a means for additional programming flexibility when compared to the inflexibility of discrete component designs. Despite all the advantages of the programming flexibility offered by the utilization of a computer, the possibility still exists that the computer itselt might "stall" causing the forming signals and the load signal to freeze and leave the individual section in an unsafe condition for the machine operator. More specifically, if the operator desired to prevent gob delivery to a particular section and if the computer stalled during an immediately preceding gob delivery to another section causing its load signal to freeze on, that load signal would cause a gob load signal to remain on despite the operator's attempt to prevent gob delivery. In such case, the operator could be seriously injured by a hot gob being delivered when he thought he had prevented such delivery.